Follow the author of this article

Follow the topics within this article

Sam Simmons, an Australian surrealist whose new show sees railing against everything that annoys him about modern life, has won the top comedy award at the 2015 Edinburgh Festival.

The Foster’s Award for Best Comedy Show was handed to 38-year-old Simmons on Saturday at a lunchtime ceremony hosted by the former cricketer Freddie Flintoff. Accepting the £10,000 prize, the Adelaide-born comedian thanked all the people who “had fingers in my pie”.

Simmons’s show, Spaghetti For Breakfast, was described as “outstanding” by Foster’s Comedy Award producer Nica Burns. “He is a complete original,” Burns said of Simmons, “combining physical comedy with great verbal jokes and a unique take on life.”

Spaghetti For Breakfast mixes sight gags, sketches and absurd flights of fancy on subjects such as chapsticks, the hell of accidentally swallowing a moth, and the life of a Ferrero Rocher researcher. The Telegraph’s Mark Monahan praised the show as “a broadside against ordinariness... very superior, very funny comic fodder”. Simmons himself, who has been nominated for the award twice before, describes the show as being about “things that s___ me”.

The £5,000 Best Newcomer Award was presented to Danish-born Sofie Hagen, whose show Bubblewrap mines laughs from her obsession with the pop group Westlife. Hagen, said Burns, is 'a young comic with an effortless engaging style. The audience is totally charmed as she delivers her story with a twinkle in her eye and an armful of jokes.”

The winners and nominees can be seen at the Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards Show today at 3,30pm at The Grand, Pleasance Courtyard